LED vs. Incandescent - I Finally Saw The Math...

Went to a LightWave site ( http://www.abdulla.faris.com/lightwave_dir/Agents_Dir/TECHMANL.RTF ) and in addition to justifying why their light output was better than a 3-cell Krypton, they also did calculations and then made these two statements:

Take our Lightwave 4000 as an example.
On one set of alkaline D-cells our Lightwave 4000 burns over 900 hours. Let's say you would replace the batteries after 500 hours, you want a solid light output.
3 batteries cost $5.50.

Take a conventional flashlight with a Krypton bulb.
It will burn roughly 13 hours on 3 alkaline D-cells. Let's say you would replace the batteries after 8 hours, you want a solid light output.
Over 500 hours you'll need 189 batteries, which will cost you $346.50.

I know LEDs save money, but I never really extrapolated the figures to this degree before.

not having a LW 4000 i would take those run-times with a grain of salt. maybe a whole shaker.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MR Bulk™:
Went to a LightWave site ( http://www.abdulla.faris.com/lightwave_dir/Agents_Dir/TECHMANL.RTF<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What's an .RTF file?
My computer doesn't know what to open it with, and is asking me to tell it. I've never seen the extension before.

An .RTF is a Rich Text File - basically an improved(?) text file format which allows additional font/formatting information etc to be specified.

If you are using Win98 or NT, you should be able to open it with WordPad..

Graham

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Graham:
An .RTF is a Rich Text File...

If you are using Win98 or NT, you should be able to open it with WordPad..<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Got it, thanks.
Dial-ups beware though, it's a 3 meg download for what looks like a 40K or 50K text document (no charts or pictures, just text) once it's open in wordpad.

Better go fix a sandwitch and start a pot of coffee when you select this file.

The definition of "usable light" is apparently any value exceeding 1 lux. The true results are indeed listed in this file, and they're nowhere near the many hundreds of hours stated to end-of-life. Impressive compared to a bulb lite, maybe - but not 900 hours.

Craig,

Sorry about the RTF, I thought it was Acrobat Reader format and that's just the way the site runs. But anyway on my 1.6GHZ P4 (cablemodem ISP) it loaded in literally about 6 seconds, so if there were any program faceplates flashing on the screen I would not see them. Hopefully you should experience this same speed (or greater) quite soon...